Shy Guy Meets the Buddha

Reflections on Work, Love, and Nature

“Don has a gentle writing style that will bring a little peace to your day.”

Bert Jackson, Former CEO, Cape Cod Technology Council

WELCOME

Posted two to four times each month, these mostly biographical essays are inspired by my struggle to find some way of living and relating in this world that makes sense and feels right; to navigate the challenge of abiding peacefully on this earth, in this body, in this human community. I explore my evolving search for a meaningful career; the deep pains and warm satisfactions of marriage and relationship; spiritual striving and the search for the true nature of self and reality; my life-long love of nature and the blissful gratification of a quiet wooded trail; the books I’ve loved; the words that have stopped me in my tracks, woken me up, or quietly accompanied me along the way.

I practice Buddhist mindfulness and meditation, not as a hobby but as a way of life. Mindfulness is paying attention to what is happening here and now, with courage and honesty and without judgement. Meditation is a practice that opens some space in the mind for clearer seeing and understanding. Some of these essays will address this subject.

I’ll share my experiences, my findings and musings through the everyday life of a working man, through relationship, through my meditation practice. I’ll share inspirations found in an old-growth pine wood, on a lonely stretch of Texas highway, in a battered copy of Walden. There will probably be some mention of music and literature. I won’t go easy on myself; I’ve made some big mistakes and learned some hard lessons. I won’t say I wouldn’t change a thing but, as the beloved Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, often said: “Without mud, there can be no lotus flower.”

SUBSCRIBERS OF “SHY GUY MEETS THE BUDDHA” (That’s you!)

You like to read. You’re a thoughtful person, not in a hurry. You dislike the rat race although you may be caught up in it. Sometimes you wonder what life is all about. You genuinely care about people. You want your choices and actions to lead to well-being, for yourself and your family but also for the wider world, and you are willing to take an honest look to see if that is the case, and to make changes if it isn’t.

Maybe you’re married, maybe you’re single, maybe retired, maybe you’re busy working to support your family, or maybe you’re alone, lonely in a little apartment somewhere, or traveling in a van across the great Southwest, finding yourself. Maybe you have enough money, maybe you have none.

I’ve been all of these things (except retired, but one can dream!), and I think you’ll see a little bit of yourself somewhere in these essays. I hope reading this newsletter helps a little or inspires you in some way. Thank you for being here!

THE WRITER (and that would be me)

I’m Don Boivin. I’m a carpenter with an English degree. I’m a father and a husband. I’m a bookworm (mostly literary fiction but with a healthy dose of creative non-fiction, popular science, and spirituality). I’m a nature lover. In the morning I love to get a dark-roast coffee and park my truck down by the fishing docks in Hyannis near where I live. I listen to the news and then I shut it off and listen to the surf and the seagulls. And as often as I can I walk (or in Thoreau’s words, “saunter”) in the woods and on the beach.

I interned as assistant editor on The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies, and have been published in the Thoreau Society Bulletin, American Lutherie, Remodeling, and Bridgewater State University’s Undergraduate Review.

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